Stuff with flaws

Synthetic emeralds

have no flaws.

Some might feel

small inclusions

don’t reduce

a natural emerald’s value

but show its age

and natural origin.

If only the same were true

of spots and wrinkles.

Vauquelin named beryllium glucina because its salts taste sweet,
but Martin Heinrich Klaproth objected because yttria salts also taste sweet.
This was an age when chemists routinely tasted their salts
and later died of mysterious causes.

Johan Gadolin had isolated beryllium oxide from gandolite
when he discovered yttrium; however, he mistook it for aluminium oxide.